and political breakthrough? then if president obama andjohnboehnercanrise above and get a deal done for the fiscal cliff, there is a lot of money that could be made in stocks. and why shouldn't top military and business leaders maintain an honorable code of conduct? isn't it better to have a moral center? general david petraeus is a great man. but he made, unfortunately, a great mistake. first up, are we on the verge for american oil revolution? according to the international energy agency, the u.s. will overtake saudi arabia as the world's largest oil producer that before the year 2020. but -- don't get your hopes completely up as the epa could block this fantastic market-driven advance. nobody better to talk about it is john hofmeister. john, it is a pleasure to have you here. now, is it credible, first of all the report, we will overtake the saudis? >> report is credible. the iea is smart, good analysts. we have the reserves, no question we have the reserves. in the ground today. number two, we have the technology to get the reserves out of the ground. and number three, we have t

boehner? twotop-tier negotiators give their insight into how the meeting could unfold. >>> and trading places. charles schwab ceo talks exclues i havely to maria about the current crisis of confidence in the stock market. could a deal on the looming fiscal cliff be just the shot in the arm sagging equities need? that and a whole lot more is ahead on the "closing bell." >>> all right. we want to show you a live picture of the white house. we are waiting for the ceos to start tricking out of the white house. they are in a meeting right now with president obama talking about the fiscal cliff, talking about ways to get the deficit and debt situation in this country in order. as soon as those ceos start coming out, they include the ceo of honeywell, ibm, a number of ceos in industrial businesses. of course, the only financial services representation there is american express. no other bank was invited to this meeting. as soon as these guys and gals start walking out, we'll bring you some interviews with them. president obama held a press conference meanwhile today on everything from the fis

cuts. the sequester has been called off.mr.boehnerwouldlike a down payment on entitlements. i don't see that happening. to me remember it used to be 3-1 or 4-1 spending cuts to revenue increases. right now it looks to me like it's 10-1. 10-0. $10 of revenue hikes and no spending cuts, jimmy pethokoukis. >> i think what we're going to get at the end of the day, you're going to get a lot of tax increases, and then you're going to get a lot of promises about caps and mechanisms. be careful of the word "process." there's going to be a process in place for looking at further spending cuts. or entitlement reform. but that's all going to be like tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the 12th of never. what we're going to get right away are tax increases in an economy that's going to be really slow. it was slow last year, slow before. the economic reports out today, terrible. and we're going to try a little experiment about raising taxes in a lousy economy. hop it works. >> jared, jimmy's got a point. the industrial production number, no matter how you slice it, with the hurricane or without

boehnertodayor not? >> no. this was no olive branch, larry. i was quite disappointed with that speech and press conference. and you noted that the stock market really collapsed as president obama was speaking because he seems not just today but the event that he had on friday, the two statements that he's made, he's been pretty emphatic that he wants those tax rates to go up, come hell or high water. that is going to lead to a mexican standoff with the republicans if he sticks with that position. i'd like to make one other point about that press conference, larry. i listened to the whole 45 minutes to 60-minute press conference, and not once that i could hear in that speech did he talk about the most important thing, which is cutting government spending. why don't we get the government spending down and then talk about raising taxes? >> you know, if you google up spending and obama, you know what you get? nothing. blank pages. you get nothing. >> in fact, larry, he said he wants his $100 billion stimulus, he wants more spending when he's talking -- trying to talk about lowering the de

last yearbetweenboehnerandobama really focused on $800 billion figure. now the white house is floating a much larger number. how do those ceos react? how do we get those negotiations going inside the room with the president here at the white house today. >> able, how much do you believe that the ceos are really going to be able to sway the president on some of the issues that maybe he has been less flexible on in the past? >> i don't think this is about swaying the president at all. i think this is about face time with the president. i think this is an effort by the two white house to demonstrate very publicly they've talked to all the plargs in the labor community yesterday and now the business community today. demonstrate they are taking in ideas from all sides. basically the positions are fairly well entrenched. in order for a final negotiation to go on it is going to be between boehner and the president, it will be something like what they were working on last year. if the ceos in today's meeting throat new ideas, there is a small chance that those will be included in t

, including the most important negotiating partner of all a, house speakerjohnboehner. >>the framework i've outlined in our meeting today is consistent with the president's call for a fair and balanced approach. >> i feel very good about what we were able to talk about in there. >> we're prepared to put revenue on the table, provided we fix the real problem. >> i feel confident that a solution may be in sight. >> and in terms of the nature of that solution, what was discussed in the meeting was a two-step process in which the leaders and the white house first agree on a framework, an amount of deficit reduction it, both tax increases and spending cuts, and then they kicked the filling in of those details into the early months of 2013. they would do that with a legislative mechanism that provides some assurance to the american people and to the financial markets, guys, that those blanks would be filled in by the time they need to to avoid the fiscal cliff. >> very big blanks. okay. thank you very much. david, a couple words we've heard here are hopeful and encouraged. are you feeling more

withboehnernextyear. talk to us about how your plan works. >> the interesting thing is if you look at the amount of income tax paid, it's about $1.3 trillion. 1. 1 from individuals, 200 billion from corporations. people always ask how can our marginal rates be so nominally high and net so little money. the reason is we have $1.1 trillion of back door spending in the tax code. that's for deductions for credits. what we said is, look, let's wipe out all of those. let's broaden the base, simplify the code. let's use 92% of that money that we're using from getting rid of the tax expenditures to reduce income tax rates and 8% of the money or about $100 billion a year, to reduce the deficit. $800 billion a year over ten years is where our $1 trillion of our $4 trillion comes from in our deficit reduction plan. >> and what rate are you going change? 8%, you know, 0 to 70 grand. 14 over that. take the corporate rate to 36. if you can't do that, you can't tax your way out of this. you can't cut spending your way out of this. you can't grow your way out of this. so grab hold. it's going to b

's about to happen in this building in an hour from now.speakerboehner, senatormcconnell, senator reid, democratic leader pelosi, all will come here and speak for a couple hours. day one of negotiations. nobody is expecting huge news but as jim has already tweeted out this morning, the market is going to look for signs that this tone of compromise that we've heard so much about all week long is that for real or are talks going to break down in early stages? the market specifically is going to depend on that tone today and we'll bring that live when the meeting happens a little after 10:00 a.m. >> we've seen reaction of futures to the possibility of a deal. we've been down for six of the past seven days but the dow this morning implied open is up 33 points. sapp looks s&p looks to add fiv. here we have italy down three-quarter percent and mixed bag for the rest. carl? okay. we're going to go to the road map this morning. that is where carl is in washington d.c. reports this morning that hard decisions surrounding deficit reduction could be kicked down the road until 2013 in favor of a s

't be enough of those to block passage.speakerboehnerwillput a coalition together of moderate companies, even some conservative republicans along with democrats to get a deal that has some increased revenue probably in marginal rate increases, also some deduction closing loophole closing, probably corporate tax rates will change tick lei larly on carried interest. he will sell it to enough people through the house while not risk it to those who have races in 2014 who might get a primary. he won't get so many defections he won't get a deal across. we shouldn't jump to the conclusion because there are still hard-line conservatives no-tax increase republicans in the house that they dominate now, they don't dominate. >> ben white, interesting analysis. >>> just heard ben white thinks we're going to get a deal done but right now america's economy is still being held hostage. the fact that washington is on vacation -- not helping. eamon javers is live on capitol hill where congress isn't. eamon. >> that's right. look behind me. see if you see any members of congress. they're not here, they're

'll play their hand i think to their full advantage. >> what kind of hand doesjohnboehnerhave?where sg it leave him and his ability to control the tea party wing? >> it actually puts skron boehner in a good position because during the debt ceiling talks last year, he had a lot of push back from the very far right of his party in the house. the tea party caucus, for example. this time around we won't see the same dynamic at all because the tea party caucus and far right have lost a lot of political capital in light of the election. so what we've already seen is speaker boehner talking to republicans in the house, putting his foot down early and saying we're not going to have that same push back we saw. instead, i'm going to tell you what we're going to do and what this deal is going to look like and you'll fall into line. >> he got criticism because he negotiated a deal and then went back and tried to sell to the party. does he naed to do he need to d way around, get a set position and then go into discussions? >> i think that is the thinking this time around. and he has certainly recog

of avoiding the fiscal cliff. he'll meet with harry reid, mitch mcconnell,johnboehnerandnancy pelosi at quarter after 10:00 eastern time. mcconnell says republicans won't raise tax rates. the white house says the president won't sign an extension of tax cuts for top earners. chinese officials including the country's vice minister are sounding alarm bells with external risks to growth. they hope the uts will come to an agreement on tax issues or warns the country could face a slide into deep recession. eunice yoom is taking a closer look at the relationship between the two economic super powers and how they're likely to proceed. >> she's sitting down to her regular taste of americana. she and her co-workers dine out at their favorite fast food joint from the west twice a week, exactly the kind of middle income chinese american companies hope will drive their future growth. >> translator: we're used to eating rice, she says. it's convenient and nice to have fast food once in a while and have a change. american companies are hoping gnaw leadership will make it easier to sell to chinese

leadership. so speakerjohnboehnerisgoing to be a lonely guy. >> i think the republicans ought to hold firm against any tax rates. president obama is striding around like he has a mandate for tax hikes but look at house republicans. for 20 years the house republican message has been against any tax hikes. voters now where house republicans were on taxes and tax hikes and the republicans retain their large majority so they absolutely ought to hold out against any tax hikes. >> that's a stalemate. >> speaker boehner has said close some loopholes. okay. there are good loopholes and bad ones. the house republicans ought to make sure that there is at least 3 or $4 of every spending cut for every dollar of loophole closing. >> there is no spending cuts. >> that's the thing. they have got to hold firm against that. >> they're talking about 400, $500 billion in revenues, maybe more. that's the republicans obsession. i didn't hear any spending cuts at all. >> the loopholes -- cuts in military spending. >> they won't do it. >> president obama has gone along with that. >> but the republicans won'

back and forth. youhadboehner's positionfrom the -- >> i don't want to anger the viewers, you but i think they're looking at obama's words the same way they look it at the polls with the kind of sense of here's what i want to believe. >> if they lose, do they go along with that and say we will accept that or do they push it over the fiscal cliff. you have people on the right and the left who are saying go over. >> in the press conference yesterday, my read of what obama said was we're raising the rates and we're put a structure for eliminating entitlements. >> correct. but if we're talking about rates, if you were playing joe, you would hear that the argument would be that this will never actually work. republicans won't go loochialon it. so some people were suggesting maybe there is a way to do 35% and get rid of deductions. >> but remember was it geithner on -- today is thursday. so this would have been tuesday. he said people are diluting themselves to think we can get where we need to get with loopholes. and i don't know about the right max, but my understanding is i don't think

with bothspeakerboehnerandpresident obama coming out talkital talking about the fiscal cliff. this week we'll see a round of negotiations capped off by a meeting at the white house between congressional leaders and executive branch coming up on friday. where are they going to end up? there are a lot of solutions kicking around town. the final deal is probably going to end up looking like at least one of these different proposals. let me walk you through four of them here so you get a sense of where we might be headed starting with the simpson bowles plan. they would cap the mortgage industry deduction at $400,000. they would also tax capital gains and dividends as ordinary income and they would have the employer sponsored health care exclusion phased out. that would be a big tax increase there. another plan that's floating around out there, you would see mortgage interest deduction limited to $25,000 of interest. capital gains and dividends here also taxed as ordinary income and the state and local tax deduction would be repealed. the gang of six plan is another one that's kicking aroun

points. >> yes, i ran fast, mandy. earlier today,johnboehner, thespeaker of the house, spoke. the markets spiked. as you hear this sound bite, we're going to show you the dow intraday, what it did, and where you see the spike. it's a spike of more than 100 points. that's when speaker boehner spoke. listen to this. >> i believe that we can do this and avert the fiscal cliff that's right in front of us today. >> is this really what led to today's midday turn around, or was it something else? let's talk about that. quincy crosby joins us. mark spellman and kevin carone. quincy, is it that simple? they came out, they used the word constructive, framework, corner stone, all those positive words, and the market took off. >> absolutely. i was watching the body language when they finished up. they walked together. they didn't separate. the market kept making gains. it was that immediate. >> mark, do you agree? >> yeah, i think it was important. we've been looking for good news. the fact that everyone's heels aren't dug in quite as badly, it's good news and what otherwise has been a b

week ofspeakerboehner's referencesto an openness to increasing revenue to the government. whether this was an affirmative desire to do that as a result of a tax reform or sort of a secondary effect of reducing rates and creating more economic growth is a little bit unclear here, but how encouraged are you from the words that the speaker has been saying and that others on the gop side have been saying about an openness really to raising revenue as part of a bargain? >> well, the tone was right. i think that that is something that certainly should be being a flojed. because there is no question when you heard the language after the statement we want to -- we're willing to see new revenues, what speaker boehner said and what the republicans are saying is that in fact the revenues can only come from economic growth. now of course as democrats we also believe in economic growth, growing jobs but we also say that we do need some hard revenues in the short term if we're going to be serious about bringing down this deficit and creating some stability for the business community and for con

it needs to be. folks are going to hold the line and i will tell you why. look at how scriptedjohnboehnerhadto be when he said revenue. where democrats fell out of their chairs. he had to do it with a t ee teleprompter. >> god bless him. raising tax rates is not the answer to this. >> but you know what, look. i know karen, other democrats believe they got this great mandate. but house republicans believe they got a mandate to put a check and balance on senate democrats as well as the president. so we are going to have to have a compromise for a change. >> we have a mandate and for president obama you would hope that he would start thinking now about what is his legacy and does he want to leave office with a terrible economy. i don't think in year eight he is going to be able to blame george bush. he ought to start thinking about economic growth. this is probably the least harmful way. > exit polls show that that george w. bush hurt romney tremendously. >> the polls are the polls. but the point i'm making in the second term, it is president obama's don mi aeconomy and def. he is going to

candidates. but romney was beaten with a tax plan not dissimilar from theoneboehneriscurrently pushing which is we won't allow taxes to go up, but we will close loopholes and romney lost on that. so there is a sense that obama for the short term has won the argument. >> granted it's a huge issue, but how many people was this election really a verdict on their tax plans? >> well, the argument is that romney often polled very well on competence in the economy, but obama polled much better on understands the needs of people like me. so there's a sense that if it comes down to class and empathy, the democrats have momentum here and the republicans are on the back foot. so in that sense, i think obama has an advantage. on the other hand republicans do have a good case to make when it comes to taxes because something that's not often discussed is that the costs of obama care will start to kick in in 2013. one example, businesses which hire 50th notice ewill face a fine of $40,000 if they don't take on government approved health care insurance. so republicans can argue that when we approach t

fromjohnboehnerand-- >> yeah,fromboehneriam. the president has now painted himself -- painted those guys in to -- how many times has he drawn a line in the sand about that high right on 250. he's made a point and he can't possibly go back on that now, can he? >> i think he can. look, i think he's drawing a line on getting money from those people, there people making 250 and above. but he hasn't drawn a line on how he gets that money. he's said at his news conference i'm skeptical that you can do enough in loopholes and exclusions to get the money that we need for a deal from that group. but he also said i'm open to new ideas. so if there is in fact an effort to close some loopholes that gets you some of the way there, you can certainly see the president, i could anyway, compromising somewhere between 35 and 39.6 on a slightly higher rate. if shall be caomebody came up w source of revenue which didn't change the distribution of the tax burden, figure out a way to do it without a top rate. i kind of expect what's going to happen is loophole closing and you end up at like 37 ors

withboehner. butmight be the beginning of bargain point. but you get 820 billion. so there's another 800 billion. at this point, the others are saying no cuts to medicare, social security, or anything else. and they have to find another 800 billion. >> the president did not say -- >> we know he has to cut some of those. >> my guess is the gop is saying they're looking at a trillion dollars as the number. >> and you saw what paul ryan said. the house was re-elected. so people re-elected those people in the house for a reason. it's a nonstarter. it's not going to happen. it's not going to be 1.6 billion. 1.6 trillion. to get to four trillion, that would be 2.4. so we said that. he'll go not 3-1 like simpson bowles. he's go one and a half to one. >> that's not going to happen either. >> but what bothers me -- >> the problem is nothing is going to happen. >> what bothers me is i do think you can get to a point where you raise taxes too much and you don't cut spending enough, where you're just funding entitlements by raising taxes and you don't do anything about it. if he had his way, i reall

and housespeakerboehnerbothlaying out their demands for a fiscal cliff deal. now we have both sides on the record. two top negotiators explain why side has the better cards to play right now and what their starting points say about the odds of getting a deal done. that should be interesting coming up. >>> and then did you see this video of israel killing the top military commander of hamas? now they may be open warfare in that region. oil prices are spiking on this developing story. we'll take you live to the story. stay with us. try running four.ning a restaurant is hard, fortunately we've got ink. it gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at office supply stores. rewards we put right back into our business. this is the only thing we've ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. make your mark with ink from chase. when we got married. i had three kids. and she became the full time mother of three. it was soccer, and ballet, and cheerleading, and baseball. those years were crazy. so, as we go into this next phase, you know, a big part of it for us is t

spoken by the american people. i think thatspeakerboehner, onthe conversation that he had recently, shows that he is ready to move into a different direction. i think that he was ready to make a deal before. but his confidence was such i believe held to grover norquist that they couldn't move on the revenue. >> has that changed? has that changed? >> i think so. the fact that the president was reelected, the fact we have gaped seats in the house, the fact that we are two years from another election, i think that has changed. the fact that a lot of the tea partiers have lost or in very lee election and/or two years of experience. have to understand there is a real compromise in working together in trying to get something done. and i have confidence as a result that we will get something done. >> let's talk a little bit about the tragedy that befelled much of your district in keeps, the rockaways and many of those folks out there. are customers of line park the long island power authority what is your message to lipa today? are you satisfied with their response? >> no, their response

to bottom here. it's just that there's not as many. >> if you saw aheadline,boehner-obama toagree to long-term solution, you would hit buy first on com? >> we no longer have to worry about rising above? >> i think we'll see that as a joke. >> only up 3% to 5% between now and tuesday. that's not their focus. >> i understand. >> but remember when germany went down, when the german forces went down. those are countries that are dominated by rich people. a lot of those companies are plutocrasies. i think when their market went down, they said holy cow, maybe we ought to do something, maybe monty ought to get together, our country t.a.r.p., that first vote, i think people said, okay, i'm going to have to work the rest of my life, there goes my 401(k) and the congressmen rise above. i hope it doesn't take that. i hope it didn't. >> we do have some media news today, viacom is out with some numbers. >> viacom is not as bad as i had feared. the market numbers down about 6% for the company which is perhaps a little bit better than might have been expected. if you take a look over the last few weeks

think they've already agreed to that. you heardjohnboehnersaythat already. we've had voteses in the senate where we've gotten rid of tax credits. i think that's a given. and i think that the vast majority of measures agree with that. the question is how do you do that and how do you allow taxes to rise at the same time you fix the real problem and that's uncontrolled entitlement spending and a government that has grown massively. >> i think if the house stands for anything, it's cut government spending as tom coburn said and i think we'll have to do more of it. we heard the mandate in 2010 where it was a clear mandate cut spending and we did, we cut $900 billion in spending that he can't like painful tos us. >> we'll continue our call to rise bol politics and make a deal. oufr guests this morning include mike jackson and also david zaslav. and the head of maris group. and douglas holtz-eakin. >> let's talk about eurozone finance ministers meeting to discuss whether to release a new tranche of fund to go greece. the leaders are not expected it to okay the funding despite greec

in congress are another. they have to come together.speakerboehnersaidhe's willing to entertain more revenue. the president should take him up on that offer and they ought to come together and find some way through this. the republican party has got to take a good luook at what its future holds but a good start will be coming together to solve this problem. >> governor, nancy pelosi of course out this morning says she's going to run again for some leadership in the congress. is that a signal that the white house is going to remain more partisan perhaps than some hope? >> actually, i don't think so. you know, nancy pelosi was the one who produced the votes for the financial bailout. you all recall that. there weren't republican votes even when president bush proposed it and secretary paulson. nancy found the votes. nancy is good at finding the votes out of our progressive wing and the president will need votes from our progressive wing and nancy is a good person to do that. >> we'll see how things go down this afternoon and later in the week. governor, lanhee good to see you back. don

can tell you that the guys in the houseandboehner, theyreally want to do this, this limiting deductions, limiting loopholes, raising effective rates, but lowering nominal rates. they want to do it that way but the president may say no and those guys in the house will say no and we might, it might happen. >> it might, but look, this is a leadership moment. we have a a leader who now has second term. he's a president. he's a fascinating individual in many respects. he's part of the problem. >> what gives you any indication he'll lead in this case? >> maybe he'll wake up to the fact that he has a chance to cut through the polarization and leave a winning legacy. this is his chance to rise above. give him a button. >> there you go. thank you for that, steve. we have more ahead from steve. coming up, we're going to talk about several stocks on the move ahead of the opening bell. we'll get down to "mad money's" jim cramer. "squawk on the street," jim cramer right after this. sometimes investing opportunities are hard to spot. you have to dig a little. fidelity's etf market tracker

of the fact that they're worried about what's not going to happen. after theelection,boehnercameout, thought he'd move some, and then obama came out the next day, and in the early part of his speech, he looked good. and all of a sudden he starts digging in. if you look at what the stock market did, it immediately dropped. came back a little bit that day, but immediately dropped. that's what's in people's minds and it's scaring the heck out of them. we have to have some solution. >> when we look to europe, it's a very similar scenario. we have all these issues revolving around greece and maybe to a lesser extent, spain, and it seems about the same dynamics. that it isn't results oriented, it's idle the car and hope things get better while you're sitting in there, hunkered down. >> that's absolutely the case. they have been spinning their wheels. fortunately for us, we've gotten away from the european situation, somewhat. because it looks like our economy can gain some traction. but it's immediately going to grind to a halt if we don't see something. >> you know, there's one area, the

.6 would be 1.5 to 1, when he waswithboehner, 800,wanted another 4. >> you were in the room so you know. >> first of all, since we talk about bowles-simpson so much, bowles-simpson has a 1:1 ratio. >> it doesn't. >> i thought it's 1:4. >> it's 1:3. >> in the way the bowles-simpson frame was put out something people didn't realize was that in terms of the revenue number they weren't counting the expiration of the high income tax cuts which they proposed to get rid of. apples to apples, in terms of the way people are currently adding up their math, it's approximately a 1:1 ratio. >> erskine bowles said you should look at 3:1 in terms of spending cuts to revenue. >> i'm just saying what was in bowles-simpson. >> let's not forget about growth, we need to stimulate growth and a lot of it on the innovation side. >> david thank you, appreciate it i put away money. i was 21, so i said, "hmm, i want to retire at 55." and before you know it, i'm 58 years old. time went by very fast. it goes by too, too fast. ♪ but i would do it again in a heartbeat. [ laughs ] ♪ ♪ . >>> welcome back, everyb